After a hallucinatory opening that establishes a connection between bees—a personal passion of our central character, Plemons’s bedraggled, down-on-his-luck Teddy—and the global economic system of workers and bosses, we meet his nemesis: Stone’s glossy-haired, Louboutin-wearing, Stanley cup-sipping, Chappell Roan-blasting, buzzwords-spewing, big-pharma girl boss CEO, Michelle. Teddy and his more gentle and vulnerable cousin, Don (Aidan Delbis), have a plan: as a violin wails menacingly, they purchase Jennifer Aniston face masks from a party store, pair them with their bee-keeping suits, lurk in the bushes in front of Michelle’s house, and attempt to abduct her as she comes home from work.
This set piece, sometimes shot from an impersonal distance, is classic Yorgos—darkly hilarious, terrifying, breathless—and that taut tension remains as Teddy and Don pack Michelle into the back of her own car and drive away, taking clippers to her hair as they do it. Totally bald, bruised, and slathered with white antihistamine cream, she wakes up in their basement, strapped to a mattress. And we’re finally told why: Teddy and Don are convinced that she’s an alien intent on destroying the earth.
Jesse Plemons’s Teddy in Bugonia.
Photo: Courtesy of Focus Features
